


Waking Up the Dead

by peacefulboo



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Going On Facebook: A Darcy Lewis Fic Exchange, Mild Whumpage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefulboo/pseuds/peacefulboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's going to need a nap after this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking Up the Dead

“You doin' okay there, Darce?” Tony's voice is light but holds a hint of concern. Darcy grimaces then smiles, her exhaustion showing on her face. 

“Once we've debriefed, I'm going to need the biggest bottle of wine you've got. Or Xanax. A lot of Xanax. Wait. Did they already gave me Xanax?” She asks.

Tony shrugs and gives her a smile that's basically the equivalent to a pat on the head. “Not yet. Might want to pick the wine or the Xanax, though.” 

“A nap would be good, too. A really long one. Like the longest nap ever. Maybe not so much a nap as just sleep. A long time of just sleeping. A long enough sleep to put Rip Van Freaking Winkle to shame.” Her reply is a little more weary than her joking words imply. 

She looks next to her where Clint is getting his face stitched up and he winks at her, then winces when the tiny motion pulls on the deep cut. Darcy snorts in completely inappropriate laughter and Clint sticks his tongue out at her lack of compassion. 

Darcy smiles up at Tony and answers his original question. “I'm fantastic.”

And here's the thing – she's not being entirely sarcastic when she says that. 

 

***

After New Mexico, Darcy Lewis graduates from Culver before moving on to Georgetown for her masters. Her plan is to eventually try for a State Department job but six weeks before she's scheduled to defend her dissertation and after six years of no contact from SHIELD, she receives a visit from an unnamed agent with an intriguing job offer. 

The younger Darcy, the one who took great offense to losing thirty bucks worth of unlistened to music, who didn't have any real understanding of what alien robots full of fire could do to a town in the span of 6 minutes, and still thought it was an excellent idea to post pictures to Facebook every eight minutes, that Darcy would have laughed in the agent's face and attempted to save the world by bringing her brilliant and heretofore never considered “fresh ideas” to the world as a State Department's Foreign Service Officer. 

An alien invasion, a few years of grad school, and a realization that all 30 of those mp3's sucked major monkey balls later, and Darcy figures a job offer should never be refused right off the bat. 

***

After 3 weeks of phone tag, stolen moments on Facetime and stops in ten different countries between the two of them, Darcy and Clint are finally able to squeeze in a dinner date. It's nice. They get a corner booth at a diner that sells wine and beer along with good burgers and even better Monte Cristos. They laugh and swap stories of their most recent missions – his were a royal waste of time and resources, hers were only slightly better. In quieter, almost whispered voices, they share a few good stories from their childhood, and though Darcy notices that Clint only really tells the same three or four stories from that time, she just files it away to broach later. 

There's a lot of touching and a few stolen kisses and the glasses of wine they've indulged in have them relaxed and happy. They lapse into silence as they wait for the check, Darcy leaning into Clint, his arm wrapped around her and the other twirling a section of her hair around his finger, letting it go and then doing it over again. 

“Do you ever wonder what you'd be doing if you weren't Hawkeye?” Darcy asks. Her timing could be better because Clint tenses a little before sighing. 

“Lately? All the time. You can only have your knees repaired so many times before it gets to be pointless. Throw in the arthritis in my shoulders...Yeah. I think about it.” His tone is matter of fact and relaxed, if a little weary. She notes that there's no sadness or anger in his voice, though, “The fact I've made it this far without dying is more than I thought would be possible. I'll probably move into training or become a handler – God I'd horrible at that – but retirement is basically a foreign concept at SHIELD.”

She's trying to come up with something profound to say. Darcy's decades away from thinking about retirement, or even switching positions within SHIELD's vast framework. She's just decided to change the subject when both their phones ring. From the ringtone, they know the calls are from Hill's office and they share a wary look before each answering. 

Moments later they slide out of the booth. Clint drops a ridiculous amount of cash on the table and walks Darcy out to his bike. Clint drives ridiculously fast through nighttime traffic and Darcy's glad she opted to wear jeans instead of a skirt. Her badassery has not yet taken on the level where wearing a skirt on a motorcycle doesn't end up with her ass on display. 

It turns out the rest of The Avengers are stuck in their own building since some damn supervillain has managed to encompass most of the residence floors of Stark Tower in some sort of containment field that said damn villain's assured has only put the Avengers in stasis, not killed them. 

If he has given SHIELD a list of demands, Darcy and Clint are not privy to them. 

The video that was sent to the SHIELD office is disturbing in how just how peaceful it is. The team is scattered around the main lounge looking for all the world like they simply fell asleep while watching a movie. Except if you look closely, you can see that no one is moving, twitching, or even breathing. The stillness is incredibly creepy. 

“According to Tech, there are four devises involved. The lower one is maintaining the stasis field, the three above are containing it,” Hill points at the schematic of the tower. The stasis field cuts a diagonal swath from a small point on 15th floor east balcony to large section of the west balcony on the 23rd floor. 

Clint is charged with getting in the building and disabling the devise that is maintaining the stasis. Anything beyond that will be addressed as things come up. Four other teams are also going in – one to take care of the 23rd floor balcony, one to secure the building's lower floors and two would come from the sky to take care of the dude crazy enough to take on Stark Tower, but competent enough to actually get somewhere with it. 

Fury and Hill are handling the diplomatic end of things. Normally this is the angle Darcy would be working but when Clint looked at her with that glint in his eye and said, “Wanna come?” she couldn't help but smile back and reply, “Hell yes, Hawkeye.”

***

It's been at least thirty-six hours since either of them have gotten any real sleep, the adrenaline has long since warn off and Darcy remembers she isn't particularly suited to field work. She's competent, in ridiculously good shape and skilled – she graduated toward the top of her training class – but she typically functions as an aide and SHIELD liaison on fairly sedate diplomatic missions. Sure, the occasional op goes pear-shaped, and she's had to learn how to dodge bullets and get her team to safety. Darcy's even been known to take out a bad guy or four along the way, but that's never been her favorite part of the job. She's just lucky. And has wicked keen reflexes. 

This is different. From the outset, it's a rescue mission. It's all stealth and elevator shafts. It's climbing, crawling and hand motions used for communication. They chose to climb up one of the lesser used maintenance elevators and then move laterally through the over sized duct work on one of the R&D floors to access the elevator that goes all the way up to the residential floors. According to Tech, the devise is on one of the unused balconies three floors below where the team has been frozen.

Getting to the device isn't all that difficult. This particular villain doesn't seem to have much of a following and there are only three guards between the elevator and the devise. Darcy chooses to taze them instead of using a tranquilizer or bullets, and ignores Clint's rolled eyes. 

Tech walks them through disabling the devise. It's quick and not so dirty. 

“That was too easy,” Darcy comments and Clint nods in agreement. 

They're right. There must have been a fail-safe because moments after they start to move away from it, the thing whirs back to life and starts beeping. 

“Damnit,” Clint bites out. Darcy's already running toward the doors, Clint right on her ass. They manage to get just inside the doors before it blows. The blast takes out the glass walls and half the room comes crumbling down. Darcy's thrown off her feet. She passes out for a few seconds because when she comes to, she can't move much and it's pitch black. Her whole body aches but after a quick assessment reveals that she can feel all her limbs. Darcy figures that's a good thing. She also realizes the reason she's having a hard time breathing is because Clint is on top of her. 

“Clint?” Darcy coughs after her question, her throat gritty and dry. Her ears are ringing like mad so if he replies she doesn't hear it. He shifts off of her and she's finally able to get a deeper breath, but it's not a brilliant plan given the coughing fit that follows. 

They slowly get to their knees and then their feet. There's glass and dust in their hair and Clint has a large cut on his cheek that's going to need stitches, if not a plastic surgeon by the time they get out of the building. Once they've established that they can both walk and rechecking to make sure the guards they took down are still secure, they make their to the elevator. 

They head up to the team's last known location and as the doors are closing, Clint runs his hands through Darcy's hair. It's not till she sees the glittering glass tumble to the floor of the elevator that she realizes why. She'd like to do a more thorough check of both of them but there's no time. Instead she clutches his hand and squeezes it quickly in thanks before letting go and giving her full attention to the doors. 

The rest of the Avengers aren't there. Clint and Darcy search the rest of the floor and then make their way up to the 23rd floor. As soon as the elevator opens, they're greeted by four guns pointed in their direction. Clint takes down three of them, and slams the “door close” button as Darcy shoots the fourth. The doors close too quickly for her to see exactly where the bullet landed, but there's little doubt it was a kill shot. Clint sends the car up to the roof and Darcy shrugs. Makes about as much sense as any other option. 

They reach the roof to find that SHIELD seems to have the rest of the building secure  
. It's rather anticlimactic. The rest of the Avengers seem to have made it through the stasis just fine. The rest of the henchmen and their leader are all cuffed and unconscious and SHIELD personnel have swarmed the place. A team has already come across the bodies of the men on 23 and another team is sent down to the 15th floor to retrieve the unconscious guards. 

Medical staff is on them quickly, O2 masks and antisepted applied liberally until they can get back to HQ. Tony and Thor make their way over to them but quickly bypass Clint and begin to fuss over Darcy. She lets them, completely unconcerned that it might make her look weak to others. Darcy's tough but she's not too proud to take comfort when it's offered. She's taken care of them enough in the past and she's just fine with letting them take a turn. 

***

As villains go this one was both lame, and scarily effective. If he'd had a more competent staff, who knows how badly south it could have gone. As it was, the team was freaked out by how completely the tower had been breached. Darcy just hoped Tony and Bruce would get a bit of sleep before diving into the task of overhauling security. 

She and Clint decide to head back to her apartment instead of Clint's place in the tower. It will be at least a few days before any of them would feel secure enough to sleep there again. 

“You have fun?” Clint asks sleepily. They're curled around each other in a way that's not terribly comfortable but they don't care to move. 

“No.” Darcy states decidedly. Then, “Yes. No...yeah?” 

Clint chuckles and kisses her still damp hair. “Yeah? Me, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Going on Facebook: A Darcy Lewis Fic Exchange comm. Caitrona_3 was the unfortunate recipient, poor thing. This is a slightly modified, and hopefully slightly better version.


End file.
